Columns 2003

Matrix needs teenage boys for interpretation

I saw the first Matrix movie because I had a thing for Keanu Reeves.  Now before you go off thinking I’m a dirty old lady, let me explain that the hunk part was less than 50% of the fascination. 

I was more fascinated with what I’d seen of him in a movie called My Private Idaho, a movie done completely in free verse – which is why only about six people in the world including me saw or liked it.

I thought it was a quirky choice for a young actor just coming off the Bob and Ted series and figured he might turn into an interesting adult actor because of it.

So I watched the Matrix.  The first time I watched it, I kept hitting the rewind button and going back over the dialogue figuring I just hadn’t been paying attention and that’s why it made no sense.  After it was over, I sat down with some10 to 14-year-old boys and had them explain it to me.  It still made no sense despite the fact that they absolutely worked themselves into a sweat trying to explain to me what for them was an obvious concept.

So I watched The Matrix a second time.  I fast-forwarded through all the action scenes and just stopped at the dialog.  That experience taught me two things.  One, watching it that way made for an extremely short movie. Two, I still didn’t understand it.  The third time I watched it, I gave up all pretense to other motives, hit the mute button and had lascivious thoughts about Keanu Reeves.

So when Matrix Reloaded came out, I thought I’d see if watching the second movie would help me understand the first any better. I’ve become somewhat obsessed with understanding what it’s about because it seems to be some sort of sweeping cultural phenomenon and I certainly don’t want to be left out.

Having sat through a matinee of the movie in which everyone else clearly understood what was going on except me, I can state with absolute certainty that the movie is about good versus evil and there is obviously one heck of a battle coming up in the final installment.

I can also state unequivocally that Keanu Reeves has lost all ability to turn my head. Of course, when Neo (Keanu) walks around in a coat that looks for all the world like the cassocks that Catholic priests wore in my childhood, any sex appeal is apt to be more than a little muted.

Apparently a lady called Trinity is Neo’s true love.  At one point, Neo risks something very important to save her. I’ll tell you what the important thing is as soon as my sources see the movie and tell me. 

In one of the stranger scenes in a movie filled with them, Neo sticks his hand through her chest without benefit of scalpels or rib spreaders and we watch in him do cardiac massage on her.  Well, that’s certainly a novel way to a young woman’s heart.

I did understand that the machines are the bad guys in this movie and that works for me and will probably work for anyone who has ever sat sobbing over his or her computer asking it why, why did it have to crash just as the report was almost done.

And I know Keanu Reeves is supposed to be some god like figure from the fact that everything he says sounds mysterious and important. He’s so deep, he actually goes through what seems like a three-hour fight scene without changing expressions once. Nor does a hair on his head get mussed. You don’t get more godlike than that.

There’s a good chance I won’t bother watching the Matrix Reloaded more than once. I don’t think I can take that much serious purpose twice in one summer. 

I will probably watch the final episode in the off chance I will finally understand what the Matrix is and where all those machines are coming from.  And if I never understand, that’s ok too.  I’ll just go back to sobbing over my computer every time it crashes just before my column is….